CHAPTER III 



Attributes and Anecdotes 



Blacks possess acquirements which white people cannot 

 successfully imitate, are industrious in fashioning weapons 

 and in the invention and practice of primitive forms of 

 amusement, and are in many respects entertaining subjects 

 to those who apply themselves, though superficially, to 

 the study of their habits and customs. On the impulse 

 of the moment they are generous or cruel, erratic, purpose- 

 less, unstable as water. 



The cat's cradle of childhood's days, in the hands of 

 a black who has practised the pastime, becomes most 

 elaborate. He makes complicated designs never dreamt 

 of by the whites — fish, palm-trees, turtles, snakes, birds 

 flying, men and women, etc. etc., the variety being endless. 

 Toy darts and toy boomerangs are common, and the 

 system of signalling by gesture comprehensive and 

 excellent. The Queensland Government has taken means 

 for the preservation of knowledge of many of the sports 

 and pastimes, as well as the language and habits of the 

 blacks, being impressed with the urgency of so doing by 

 the rapid decrease in their numbers. Many have been 

 hastened from the world by a new and seductive vice. 

 Chinese cultivators of bananas found the blacks useful, 

 and rewarded them with the ashes from their opium-pipes 

 Mixed with water the dregs form a warm and comforting 

 beverage, but its effects were terrible. The fiery liquors 

 of mean whites, and diseases contracted from the depraved, 

 killed off many of the original lords of the soil. Opium 

 was supplying the finishing touches when the Australian 

 Federal Government, by an act of conscious virtue, for- 

 bade its introduction to the Commonwealth, save for use 

 V 305 



